Personal Safety and Self Defense for children, teens and adults

A Year’s Worth of Safety Tips of the Month

Don't give up

When you're applying a new safety skill or idea, don't worry if it feels awkward at first. New skills usually do. Don't give up. The key is to make the material your own, by putting ideas into action. No amount of thinking about swimming will teach you how to swim. You learn the new skill of swimming when you get into the pool and test the water. Similarly, when you actually apply the principles of personal safety, they can become a part of your life. Here is a way to look at the learning process that might reassure you. In learning something new, it can be helpful to think about the process taking four stages:

1. Unconscious incompetence. You don't know something, and you don't even know that there is anything to learn. Maybe you become aware of a problem or difficulty. You think there might be a solution. You are moving towards the next stage.

2. Conscious incompetence. You are aware there is something for you to learn. You begin to learn the skills. You make mistakes. This is completely natural as you go through this stage. New skills or ideas feel awkward. People usually feel clumsy putting them into action. Many people stop learning new things at this stage because they don't like to feel awkward. It's okay to feel awkward. Keep going. Keep practicing. Before long you'll reach the next stage of learning.

3. Conscious competence. You have put in a lot of practice. You can use the skill well. It still requires some thinking and conscious effort. There is still one more stage.

4. Unconscious competence. The new skills are now just part of your life. They have become your new way of doing things. You have fully integrated them. You don't have to think any longer: you simply behave differently. The more often you practice something, and the more intensely you practice, the more rapidly you will reach the level of unconscious competence.

We hope when you learn new skills you'll keep going and make them such a part of your life that you completely forget about it. It's just your new way of doing things, completely natural, positive and empowering.

Trust Your Intuition

Your intuition is an immensely powerful, innate, survival skill. Keep paying attention to and practicing your intuition. It will repay you by speaking to you more clearly, more powerfully and more often.

Trust your intuition. If the warning bells are going off, there is something wrong.

Real Self-Defense

Real personal safety is much more than physical techniques! Each of you reading this has the potential of enormous physical and emotional strength ready to keep you and your family safe. You can be courageous. And you each can have a powerful survival instinct. When you ignite the fire inside you - the combination of your caring for yourself, your personal power, your desire to live and to grow - there is nothing so powerful.

Recently, Oprah Winfrey had a repeat show in which there was a wonderful segment on safety. An elderly woman described how she had defended herself by grabbing a man's testicles and penis and twisting hard. He did not continue his attack! (I guess that's what you call 'understatement'.) She threw him out of the house and called the police.

Woman, child or man - you can defend yourself if attacked most of the time - if you know what to do and are prepared to do it. We like to say that the attacker has stepped way outside the bounds of normal civilized behavior - you cannot continue to give him civilized consideration if you are going to keep yourself safe.

Think about it now, and decide that you will do what you need to so you can be safe. You have tremendous power inside you already. If you want to take a course, the right one can help bring out that power and help you increase your options. You CAN keep yourself and your family safe against almost anything.

Believe in yourself

You have more courage and strength than you realize. If you are already in touch with this, know that you have even more! Believing in yourself really is the foundation of safety.

If it looks too good to be true – it probably is!

Looking after your personal safety can often overlap with looking after the security of your property. A burglary may turn violent if you are there or if you come back while it's in progress. Car-jackings are frequently perpetrated with a high level of violence, and so on. Of concern is protecting yourself from con artists who trick their way into your house to carry out their crime.

Beware of anyone coming to your door with incredibly inexpensive offers to fix your roof, check your furnace, inspect your wiring and so on. Once inside, they may steal from you and worse. If you need work done, phone a reputable company, preferably after a personal recommendation from a friend. Beware of "police officers" wanting your help in an exciting project to trick a criminal. The real police do not involve civilians in this way. Criminals have pretended to be all kinds of workers, professionals, charity collectors and even priests or nuns.

There are far too many tricks to list them here. Use the principle: If it looks too good to be true, it probably is.

Trust your perceptions and trust what you want

There are many different responses a harasser or would-be attacker may give to your setting a verbal boundary against his intrusion. Many of them involve trying to turn the situation around to make it seem as if you are wrong. Some common tactics are:

• Saying it was just a joke.

• Saying he didn’t mean anything by it.

• Displaying hurt feelings.

• Trying to make it seem like you are over-reacting, or crazy.

• Trying to make it seem like you are misunderstanding.

• Telling you what you really mean or really want.

• Suggesting, or even demanding, that you explain and justify yourself.

• Suggesting you have emotional problems.

• Maybe even suggesting he can help you with those problems.

• Denying his behavior.

• Becoming angry and trying to intimidate you.

This is why it is so important to know what you want when setting a boundary. Many women say these tactics are most difficult to respond to when someone they know is using them. They doubt themselves. They may tend to agree with the harasser that they are over-reacting or misunderstanding.

ACT!

When your awareness or intuition warns you of potential danger, always ACT to increase your safety.

We may learn to pay better attention to what we sense or feel, but it will do little good if we carry on with the same action. If we sense possible danger, it is crucial that we do something to increase our safety and security. For example you might

• Cross the street to avoid a seemingly dangerous person.

• Break a date because of an uncomfortable feeling.

• Avoid a certain acquaintance.

• Make sure you are never alone with a particular co-worker.

• Turn a one-on-one interaction into a group interaction.

• Make sure that people who care about you know whom you are with.

But whatever it is you do, pay attention to the warning and do SOMETHING!

Put yourself first

When it comes to your personal safety, put yourself first, your feelings, your well-being and your physical safety. Giving others the benefit of the doubt could endanger you. Giving yourself the benefit of the doubt could save your life.

Self-defense is NOT violence!

We have, at times, spoken to women who were initially reluctant to learn truly effective self-defense because they thought of it as violent - as lowering themselves to the attacker's level.

A surgeon can wield a knife (scalpel) to save someone's life. A predator can wield a knife to harm someone. "Wielding" your self-defense skills to preserve your life, and to return to those who love you and need you, is a powerfully positive and life-affirming action. It has NOTHING in common with the actions of those who prey on others for their own pleasure.

So, if you haven't made a decision about this before, please consider it now - because, when you are in the middle of a situation it might be too late to think about these matters and to decide what you are willing to do. Give yourself permission - right now - to do what you need, to defend yourself. Then, if you ever need to, you'll be prepared to act immediately, decisively and powerfully to protect yourself.

Use Alternatives to Drunk Driving

Let's step away from harassment and attack to address one of the greatest dangers posed by people on the road, especially from teens - drunk driving.

It's bad enough, those who are foolish enough to hurt themselves. But what really gets to me is the thought of all those passengers, pedestrians and drivers of other vehicles who might be crippled or killed by this stupidity.

Let's always be supportive of the youth and other people in our lives taking the safe alternative; whether that be using the cab fare we gave them, calling us for a ride, catching the bus, walking home together, or in staying sober and driving their drunken friend.

Empower young people, support and inspire them to exercise their personal power to look after every aspect of their emotional and physical well-being.

Trust yourself...

Trust experts for your information - but not just people who say they are experts. Look for people who can give you success stories - and "buckets" of them - with facts you can verify independently. And trust yourself and your intuition. Real safety is actually a fairly simple and common sense matter in many ways. A wolverine needs no fancy complicated techniques and neither do you. You already use your awareness and intuition every day -- trust their messages when they give you a warning. You have immense knowledge, strength and wisdom inside you. Sometimes it just needs to be re-awakened. Look for people who can help you do that

Don’t Keep Problems a Secret: A Safety Tip from Irene van der Zande